Every time I opened a newspaper in my late teens and early 20s, when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was at its height, I half-expected to read news that Rushdie had been attacked. But that was decades ago, and so much time has passed that this month’s heinous attack on Rushdie was somehow a shock. And the photos […]
Read More What I’ve been writing and reading: August 2022This week’s heat wave has forced the dogs and I to retreat to the one room in my house with air conditioning for 21 hours a day. Because my life right now is pretty much crammed inside these four walls, everything is feeling kinda insular and maybe a little claustrophobic. I’m also finding it pretty […]
Read More What i’ve been reading and writing: July 2022I was disappointed, but not surprised, to read that Seattle author Neal Stephenson, who invented the idea of a metaverse in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, has partnered with a blockchain company to create a real-life metaverse. The disappointment comes from the fact that I’m a big fan of Stephenson—I nominated him for a Genius […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: June 2022I’m in the pits right now, friends. The news is all heartbreaking, the weather in Seattle is pretty dire, and nobody knows for sure if Covid is or is not going to throw the mother of all comeback tours in the fall. I’m also tearing my hair out over the fact that a judge in […]
Read More What i’ve been writing and reading: may 2022In the week since Elon Musk announced he was buying Twitter, he has already encouraged racist and misogynist bullying of Twitter employees, he’s publicly embraced alt-right sleazoids including the guy who inspired the “Pizza Gate” misinformation campaign, and he’s continually railed against the “woke” left (which apparently includes Netflix for some reason.) Now I’m not the brightest bulb on the […]
Read More What i’ve been writing and reading: April 2022Roughly three-quarters of the population in Seattle seems to have entirely let their guard down when it comes to Covid. I’m in the quarter of the population that’s holding their breath and waiting to see if infection numbers spike, like they did the last two times we started to relax and gather in public. Even […]
Read More What I’ve been writing and reading: March 2022As I’ve written multiple times (sorry) the collected edition of the comic I created with artist Fred Harper, Snelson: Comedy Is Dying, will be published on March 15th. I don’t have any celebratory Ides of March bookstore readings or events on the calendar to mark the publication for a couple of reasons: Virtual readings really bum […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: February 2022Back when I blogged multiple times a day for a living, I loved a good story about some crank trying to ban a book in her kid’s school library. The parent in question would always have some dumb quote that I could ridicule, I could talk about how great the book they were trying to […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: January 2022The fifth and final issue of Snelson: Comedy Is Dying, the dark satire about cancel culture and comedy that I created with genius artist Fred Harper, came out last week. If you want Snelson on your bookshelf, you’re in luck—the fancy-pants collected edition, which will include five bonus short Snelson comics and some neat behind-the-scenes […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: December 2021Earlier this month, for the first time in almost two years, I double-masked up and went to one of the two big chain movie theaters in downtown Seattle. And I want to be positive about rejoining life after lockdowns, but it was an objectively terrible experience.Before the pandemic, I went to the movies a lot—roughly […]
Read More What I’ve been reading and writing: November 2021
Paul Constant 